Quests: Creeping Doom (Balga's Dais BCNM30)

For quite some time now, Grym and Kiki have had a plan to do Creeping Doom as a THF/NIN and WAR/NIN spamming sleep bolts into Bitoso (a Crawler), with Elboron as WHM or BRD for support and paralyna. So last week, Kiki made stacks and stacks of acid, holy, and sleep bolts, and got many many HQs in the process. This upset Grym, who was making beeswax and silent oils, and didn't get any HQs, though I believe she's even above the 51-tier for the beeswax.

These were cluttering up inventory all week, but this Friday night we finally tried it out. We were loaded to the gills with Ranged Accuracy and Agility Gear (Bowyer's Ring, Beetle Ring +1, dual wielding archers knives, full Noct +1 for Grym, Kampf gear for Kiki, Winged Pendant, Nomad's Mantle, Roast Pipira for food), and our marksmanship skill was capped for a level 30. Elboron opted to come as a WHM.

For our first run, Grym and Kiki mostly just shot sleep bolts, but we weren't doing a lot of damage (20-25ish unless it had put Cocoon on, then more like 10-14), and the crawler still got in a lot of Cure IIIs. I started using Holy Bolts, and saw that they were doing 43-55 base damage with another additional 15-25. Elboron kept us healthy and unparalyzed. Bloody bolts weren't returning much HP, so we stopped using those. We tried to keep its defense down with an occasional Acid Bolt as well. Elboron tried to keep it Slow, Paralyzed, and Silenced, but it was incredibly resistant to spells. We ended up timing out on the first run, but decided to try again, with Kiki just using Holy Bolts and Grym just using Sleep Bolts.

The second run was much better. We started out with Kiki lowering its defense with an Acid Bolt, and Grym sleep bolting it. From then on we alternated Holy and Sleep. We got the timing down pat, and the Crawler only got maybe two Cure IIIs in, the first at the very start when it didn't do it much good. My husband was watching my screen and as soon as Kiki's crossbow came up, he'd hit his macro to shoot a sleep bolt. Kiki's holy bolt would wake it up, and Grym's sleep bolt would put it right back to sleep, usually interrupting a Cure III. Yay! We cleared it in 11 minutes and 3 seconds, and got a Genin Earring (+4 AGI when /NIN), an elm log, a sheet of bast parchment, and a silk thread. Not an abundance of riches, but we sold the earring for 600K, so it wasn't bad.

We tried it again a third time, but luck was not on our side for this one. A few missed bolts, both from paralysis and just plain missing, pretty much guaranteed another failure. We got smacked around a lot more by the crawler because of this, and he kept getting in his Cure IIIs as well. At one point, Elboron had to use Benediction to keep us going, and I don't know how, but Kiki managed to get hate back with a provoke. I guess all the holy bolts had really been annoying him. We ended up timing out again.

It was definitely a lot of fun. I've been ridiculed by a couple of people in the LS for "wasting" seals on any BCNM that isn't Worms Turn, but with over 1000 seals between Grym and Kiki, we'd really rather try different things for fun. Fortunately Elboron is like-minded, and willing to risk his own seals as well. I think we're going to try the Birds of a Feather one next, another level 30, which we'll do as BSTs.

The next night, when we were at Balga's Dais for Windurst Mission 6-2, a trio of BLMs dressed for level 30 appeared dead in a heap outside the burning circle. After we raised them, I asked "Creeping Doom?" and they laughed and said yes. At least timing out wasn't as painful as a full wipe!